What we learned on ‘Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey’ last night – “Sisters of the Sun”

Have you ever heard of Anna Jump Cannon? No? That’s what we thought.

‘Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey’ Recap “Sisters of the Sun”

Our relationship with the stars years ago were far more personal because our lives depended on them. We used to actually, you know, SEE them in the sky.

In fact, we used to be connected by the stars. We would see patterns and we saw that these motions in the stars coincided with changes on the Earth.

The Pleides have a couple of origin stories. One involves Odin being a total jerk.

Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Swan Levin and Cecilia Payne are three names you should know, but you probably have never heard of.

Anna Jump Cannon led Pickering’s team to catalog 1/4 million stars.

Henrietta Leavitt discovered the law to measure distances to stars and size of cosmos.

A newborn star is about 5 million years old. A toddler star is about 100 million years old.

Stars are formed from the gas and dust of interstellar clouds. (Dark patches in the Milky Way are the result of interstellar dust.)

Most familiar constellations are a mix of near and far stars of various degrees of brightness.

Most stars in our night sky orbit around celestial companions.

The native Australians found constellations in the absence of stars.

In a billion years, the sun will be 10% brighter. And that will indeed affect our Earth, even if you think it’s a small margin.

The sun will eventually go out and collapse like a souffle. The core will grow smaller and the surface is getting larger. Ergo, collapse.

Which fact above blows your mind the most?